CMU’s One Liners: Iceland, Aston, Hackman and more

Other notable announcements and developments today…

• Iceland has been announced as the focus country for next year’s Eurosonic Noorderslag festival, which takes place on 14-17 Jan. Acts so far confirmed to perform at the event are Kaleo, Kiasmos, Samaris, and the CMU approved Rökkurró. Full details here.

• Backflipping ex-JLS pipsqueak Aston Merrygold (pictured) is officially ‘ridin solo’ nowadays, having recently signed a deal with Warner Bros. He confirmed it via an Instagram post yesterday, to which was stapled the longest caption OF ALL TIME. Merry Christmas!

• Now-trio Portico, who by the way play live at London’s Islington Assembly Hall on 4 Dec, have signed to Ninja Tune in order to release a new LP one day. So hip hip yay for that. This is a track from said LP, titled ‘Living Fields’.

• The Rumer lady is back after a lil break, and all set and ready to go ahead with releasing a new solo record entitled ‘Into Colour’. This here is lead single ‘Dangerous’ ahead of the big LP release on 10 Nov.

• Approved symphonic pop artiste Lydia Ainsworth is streaming her excellent next LP, ‘Right From Real’, on the internet pre its release next week. Dive into it via this link.

• Ms Marika Hackman of folkish pop fame has detailed her first LP, ‘We Slept At Last’, which will be available in the world “in February 2015”. Go on and watch a live clip of Hackman singing one of its songs, ‘Cinammon’, now.

• Gloomy-lord-of-movie-scores Trent Reznor has previewed a set of excerpts to his gloomy ‘Gone Girl’ score. Listen to them here.